Ecommerce in The Netherlands grew to €13.96 billion in 2014

Ecommerce in The Netherlands is still growing. Last year, the online retail industry increased by 8.4% to reach 13.96 billion euros. During the last six months of 2014, the ecommerce industry even grew harder than it ever did for the last five years.

New data on the Dutch ecommerce industry comes from the Thuiswinkel Markt Monitor, a study conducted by GfK. Although the growth rate of online spending last year (8.4%) was about the same as in 2012 (8.6%) and 2013 (8.5%) there was however a big change in the second half of 2014. During the period July-December online spending increased by 11.9%, that’s more than in the same period in previous years.

The Dutch have spent 13.96 billion euros online last year. Consumers bought more than 127 million products online with a total value of 7.02 billion euros, while spending 6.94 billion euros on online services. The online purchases of products now account for 10.2% of total product purchases in The Netherlands. When we look at the share of online services it’s a whole different ball game: two thirds of all service purchases happens online.

When we mix these percentages together, it shows that 17.6% of all purchases (products as well as services) in The Netherlands happens online. With regards to the consumer retail industry it seems that the share of products being sold online is about 7.6% (2013: 6.6%). The growth of consumer spending is mainly due to the growth of online spending, says Wijnand Jongen, director of branche association Thuiswinkel.org.

Cross-border ecommerce in The Netherlands
The study also looked at the cross-border ecommerce situation in The Netherlands. Dutch consumers spend most of their money abroad in Germany and China. Cross-border ecommerce is worth 390 million euros and the most popular product categories are airline tickets and accommodations (€132 million), IT and consumer electronica (€42 million) and clothing (€31 million). The study also reveals that one in five inhabitants (2.8 million) have bought something from a foreign website last year.